


nocturne

by Aerielz



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Agard knows her shit, Episode Tag, Episode: s06e10, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 18:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9337670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerielz/pseuds/Aerielz
Summary: He wants to say something, he feels like he should, but last time he felt like this and opened his mouth she left him, and he can't be alone now, definitely not now, so he keeps his mouth shut and hopes to God his silence is enough.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here be just one more fanfic about the end of episode ten, because this had been sitting on my computer for months. In fact probably more than that? It was some general idea I had after the S5 finale, but I couldn't make it go anywhere, and then came S6 and after that scene I realized this worked better as a follow up to it, instead of where I thought it would.
> 
> Unbetaed, so there will be mistakes. Probably. Certainly.
> 
> Rating goes for insinuations of adult themes and things like that.

There's a tumbler full of whiskey in front of him, and someone playing something on a grand piano.

They're in a tiny, classy, place he knows Donna likes to come once in a while. A hole in the wall from sixty years ago and the best kept secret of the off-Broadway casts' arsenal of post-show bars and pubs. On a far corner of wallpaper and dark wooden panels there’s a long bar, and behind it only hard liquor, beer, and a bartender that smiles when Donna nods him to fill her glass.

Harvey has never set foot in here before.

He knows it’s on the other side of the island and he has no idea how they got there, but it's the song that gets his attention. The fact that he can hear it, at first, because everything has been so loud in the last few weeks, so fast, and now there's this song. Familiar, and slow, such a delicate thing to hear in such a time. Like empty hallways and echoing floors it forces him to a halt, but not as violently. It slows him down and cushions the fall, and he knows this, he heard this before.

Harvey takes his eyes of the whiskey to glance at Donna with a question on his face.

"Clair de lune." She tells him, her French so very well accented.

The name doesn’t mean much to him, but the sound echoes in his memory. He tries again for another memory, then, _how did they get here_ , _how did they get here_? He digs on his brain, pulls, pulls and-- ah, he understands, that's it. It's not that he doesn't remember what happened until now, he's not that drunk. But he's drunk, alright, so he remembers, but it doesn't matter.

He plays with the rim of the tumbler, rounding it with his finger, feeling her eyes on him.

He wants to say something, he feels like he should, but last time he felt like this and opened his mouth she left him, and he can't be alone now, definitely not now, so he keeps his mouth shut and hopes to God his silence is enough.

"Harvey.” Her voice doesn't betray her state of mind, but when he looks at her again she's tracing the borders of her glass too. They have each other's tells.

She laughs out of nervousness and brings the glass to her lips, sipping at her scotch. Her chest rises in a long and deep breath, her hands comb her hair. Donna looks at him for a long couple of seconds, studying him fully, before her head drops to his shoulder. His body moves closer to accommodate her.

"I broke up with Mitchell."

The confession falls to his ears and the alcohol loosens his tongue.

"It's the shit storm of the year, I can't say I'm surprised."

"Thank you for your support." She says, unwavering, a hand coming up to her face to clean up a stray tear he can’t see.

"Shit, Donna. I'm sorry. I am, but you're lying if you're saying this is the worst news of the last few weeks."

"Christ, shut up, you're only making it worst." She laughs. He can feel her hesitation as the barkeeper fills another finger of whiskey into her cup. “Are we planning on going to work tomorrow?”

He almost flinches at her words.

"Seriously?"

"I'm just trying to decide if the hangover is worth it or not."

She sighs and turns to him a little. He can feel her breathing in his neck. They don't touch often, he can't remember the last time she was this close. But he's not surprised when it feels good. He knows exactly why she told him about Mitchell, and he can’t blame her for doing it. He doesn’t care, not today.

“I’ll find a way to make it all work, Donna."

"You don't have to do this.”

"What?"

"Fix everything alone."

"What, you don't think I can do it?” He jokes.

"Oh no, I know you can. Even something like this, I'm pretty sure you'd find a way to turn it all around and save the day. You’re probably thinking about it right now."

He is. Deep in his mind he's categorizing, planing, thinking, remembering. In his head it's already tomorrow and everything is fast and he's pulling the firm to its feet, and Mike’s working with them again and he just need to live those things. The answer is there, he just needs to pull it together, make it happen.

"I feel a but coming."

"But you don't have to do this. Not now."

“You bet your ass I-"

"Harvey." Her head is off his shoulder, her hand holds his arm. Her eyes are trained to his and close, so close, to his. "Mike's life is upside down. We don't have one single associate left. Jessica left, and Louis—I don’t even know what’s gonna be of Louis."

"Louis is Louis, he’s gonna be alright."

“Harvey, you don't need to take it on you to fix it by yourself, this time. Give it some time."

He's had to much too drunk to have this conversation. He would never do it sober.

"Donna-"

She sighs, almost annoyed.

"Just finish your whiskey.” She lectures. ”Maybe another one, go home, sleep until noon. We can save the day after that." 

"We?"

"When did you ever do something without me?"

He opens his mouth to answer, but she’s having none of it.

"I'm not saying you can't, because that'd be way too much co-dependence, even for the both of us." She quips, not entirely joking. "I'm saying it’s alright that you don’t want to. Just like you don't want to be alone tonight."

He feels her eyes on his temples and it takes the last of his scotch and some effort to not look at her. What she guessed he’d have never voiced, but his want for her is probably written all over face. He wonders what he'd see in hers if he turned around.

"C'mon", she says, a hand connecting to his arm and grabbing at the expensive fabric of his suit to gently pull at it. "Let's go."

He notices how she doesn’t say ‘let’s go home’, and he notices the word echoing in his brain when he presses her between the door of his condo and his chest, half an hour later.

He’s not entirely sure they should be doing this. He's not entirely sure they won't both regret this the following morning. He’s not entirely sure this isn’t the worst best idea he had since hiring Mike. But he knows that it's all so familiar. Donna tastes like expensive whiskey and a winning case, and her skin feels like late nights at the office, jazz and the New York skyline.

And he also knows he's drunk and so is she, so his mouth leaves hers and he expects her to know what his silence means.

"It's alright." She says between them. Her lips brush his. He doesn’t want to hesitate, he wants her, but he knows that he says things, and that he does things, and that he’s uncaring about outcomes. So he waits for her lead. He doesn’t usually follows, but Donna guides gently and seamlessly. Sometimes he finds himself on her tracks unwittingly, lured by banter. This time he steps in by choice, lured by the awareness of his own shortcomings.

It's a rare happening. He wants to turn around and leave, but he's home.

Her hands rise to his face, her thumbs cover his mouth.

"We'll think about all of it later, it’s alright.”

She leans in, lips replacing fingers and connecting softly with his. She nips lightly until he takes her jaw in his hands and parts her lips with his tongue. Harvey’s hands find her hair, unhurriedly making a mess out of the perfect symmetry of her hair. When his head dips lower he finds the rhythm of her heart in her neck, the soft skin of her cleavage. Her nails scratch at his scalp as he nips at her skin. It's going to leave a mark, if a subtle one, but she doesn't tell him not to, and he doesn't ask. His arms snake around her waist, and he holds her close while his fingers try to find the tiny clasp and zipper of her dress. He fumbles for long seconds. Donna moans and laughs at the same time. The sound vibrates on her chest, resonate with the pleasant buzz of alcohol inside of his skull.

"Do you need help back there?” She asks. Her nails scratch his nape lightly. Harvey shivers.

"Hush," he tells her, his mouth going up and up to nip at her ear. "It's a matter of honor."

She laughs again, her hands now on the tie he refused to loosen earlier at the bar. When he finally gives up trying to sliding the zipper down his tie hangs from his neck and she already set free two of his top buttons. Donna’s on the process of working out the third when he stops and leans back just enough to look at her.

"Maybe we should take this to your bedroom.” She says.

"So very vanilla, Donna, I thought you liked to be more creative with your flavors." He quips.

Donna takes his hands in hers and walks towards the back of his living room where the door to his bedroom is ajar, dragging him behind her. He can see her back of her neck, can almost taste the skin there. With a longer stride Harvey presses his chest on her back, sends his arms around her again. They fit so well. In heels she's just tall enough so he can put her earlobe between his teeth.

“I do have a taste for whip cream.” She answers. “But when it comes to it, I’m a woman of classics.”

They stumble to the door of his bedroom. Her fingers entwined with his. When they reach his bed, Donna playfully pushes him down on the mattress and straddles his hip.

Harvey lets her — It’s an amazing view, and she’s clearly the one who knows what they’re doing.

 

* * *

 

A thirty three dollars shot of whiskey doesn't have the same effects as the cheap beer he used to drink as a teenager, but it's still alcohol. He wakes up and there's a faint headache at the back of his skull, helping him burn his way back to consciousness. It's not a hangover, but it's not pleasant either.

Along with his conscious mind comes the way Donna sighed and moaned that night and his stomach drop all the way down to the ground floor through the other eleven stories below him. He all but jumps to a sitting position, a wave of nausea revolting everything that's not in his stomach to lurch on his insides, trying to find a way out. And maybe it is a hangover, he thinks, but it isn't because what he drank was nowhere near enough to cause this.

Harvey stands up, goes step by step to his bathroom, and realizes maybe Donna was really tired, because she didn't wake up, did she? Or maybe she wasn't there anymore.

His fingers grip in the stone of the sink at the thought, his knuckles going white. He finally notices his breathing going rampart, his heart pounding on his chest, desperate to burn out, work itself to a stop before something worse happens. When he manages to return his breath to a slower rate, the image on the mirror is the kid who moved to manhattan with his entire wardrobe in a duffel bag and no desire to spend time awake between the new walls.

Harvey pats cold water in his face, brushes his teeth to try to force Donna's taste of his memory and leaves his en suite without looking back.

A mug of strong coffee heats his hands a few minutes latter, when he peruses the bookshelves in his home office. He finds the PSL bylaws, three enormous binders of Louis Litt's words and pieces of law wizardry. He gathers up the binders and puts them on top of the table, and a strange feeling prompts him to look around.

It feels wrong, his office. The thought of sitting down on his chair is strange to him. When was the last time he did it? Three years before? Four, maybe? He remember trying the chair at first, when he bough it, and then nothing.

The room feels like that showroom, in a furniture store. He almost experts to look up and find the light fixtures, or to find a price tags on the back of the chair. The bookshelves on those places are full of outdated law books, aren't they? Pretty to look at, not much more you can do with them.

Harvey opens one of the binders just to be sure that they're not full of blank pages, and instantly regrets giving in to the thought. He gathers up the volumes and leaves trough the door to settle them again on the coffee table in front of his couch.

The glass of his living room feels more familiar. The skyline and the brightness ease his mind into a more comfortable pace.

Harvey takes volume one, opens it up, and starts reading. Hours into it, he feels the couch giving in to a weight next to his head.

"Hello, handsome." Donna says. A shot of relief follows her voice, easing something on him that he didn’t notice coiling up during the morning.

He looks up and finds her rubbing her eyes like sleepy a child. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“You’ve slept a lot.” He notes.

“Just following my own advices.” She answers. Donna doesn't ask if he's alright, and he knows, just then, he'll never be able to this. This knowing what's best, and doing it without asking for nothing in return. He wants to kiss her and ask for her forgiveness, but settles for bringing the pages back in front of his eyes again.

"Light reading, huh?" She quips. “Need some help?"

His left hand leaves the paper to find the skin of her thigh. Fingers awkwardly trace the contours of her knee before dipping down behind it and pulling to nudge her leg up. Instead of obliging, she has a better idea. Donna signals for him to sit up and he does. She sits where his head used to be, and pulls him down. When he settles again, he finds himself cradled between her legs, her thighs under his arms, one of her hands on his hair. With the other, she reaches for the stack of leaves on top of his stomach. He watches as she separates what's part one and part two, to take the later for herself.

"Looking for anything specific?"

He feels it in him when she talks.

Harvey fishes on his brain for something to tell her, but up until now he’s been skimming pages and rereading phrases he can’t concentrate enough to understand.

“Just getting familiar with what’s gonna change.”

"Well, then I better also get to it."

When she settles back with her stack and starts running her hands through his hair he expects to be distracted. He is, for a few minutes, but after that her warmth and her caress feel like they've always been there. He knows that when she stops, he'll miss it.

The paperwork becomes an excuse, and Harvey wonders if this is something that they do now. It feels good, being this easy, this comfortable. A question rises on his chest, but he breathes it out. He falls asleep on her lap, instead, and wakes up with his phone alarm going off.

Donna jolts up along in surprise, behind him, cussing under her breath.

“Three in the afternoon?” she says, taking his phone from the coffee table and sliding the screen to turn the noise off. There’s no sleep in her voice, she was already awake. “Why on earth do you have an alarm set up for three in the afternoon?”

Harvey sits up without saying a word. He goes up to the balcony on his kitchen and takes out the orange bottle of medicine out of a small drawer. The pill goes down his throat as he tries not to think about Donna watching him do it.

“I gotta be somewhere.” He says. One of her eyebrows lifts in silent question. He’s not sure whether this is about the medicine or his going out. Both explanations cross at his throat when he tries to say it out loud, and none of them reach his lips.

Harvey’s inside a sweater and a pair of jeans, already, when he looks at her in the eye again. Donna has taken his place on the couch, and his task with the bylaws.

He leaves. Doesn't give himself too much time to think.

 

* * *

 

“That’s quite the turn of events.” Agard tells him, amused. Hell is breaking lose and his therapist finds it all awfully fun. “At least Mike’s out.”

“At least Mike’s out? Are you even listening to me?”

“I am. But you don’t sound all that worried, so I have no reason to be, either.”

“How come I don’t sound worried? Of course I’m worried."

“You don’t.” She laughs. “I’m the one who should be asking you that.”

“Look, I am worried, okay? But Jessica left it with me and Louis, so I’m pretty sure we know what we’re doing.”

“Then there you have it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Maybe it is. Just give it some time, you’ll figure it out.”

“You sound like Donna."

“Donna sounds like a very reasonable woman."

“You both sound crazy.”

“Yet you're not worried. Somehow you must agree with her."

“You and her are always so sure of everything."

“You’re one to talk, aren’t you.”

“I’m not always sure of everything, hell, I’m not even sure what I should be talking to you right now. But life gets a lot easier when you at least sound like you know what you’re talking about. People tend to listen to you a little bit more.”

“And did you learn that from her, did she learn it from you, or you both just happen to like to pretend you have it all figured out?”

“Donna is Donna, she knows everything. It’s her freaking life motto or something.”

“She probably knows a lot, but everything?"

“Why are we talking about Donna?"

“You brought her up. Why do you want to be worried so much?"

“I don’t have time to slow down.”

“Change takes time, Harvey. And Donna knows this, and you know this."

“Change takes time when you don’t know where you want to go.”

“Do you?” She presses.

“It’s not just up to me, and last time I checked I can’t read minds.”

“Have you tried asking?”

“That’s not how it works."

“Look around, Harvey. Things worked in a certain way yesterday and now they don’t work at all, anymore. You might want to start making adjustments.” 

 

* * *

 

He wants to go home, and finds himself in front of the PSL building. It’s still _Pearson_ Specter Litt until she signs the papers.

The ride on the elevator takes years, and when the doors ding open he’s twenty something again, with his fingers tapping nervously against the doorway of his parent’s house. He feels his father’s hits on his jaw prompting him in, his brother’s words reinforcing the challenge. Harvey walks inside his childhood home, his feet heavy with dread echoing on the wooden floor, and finds it empty. He takes another step forward and his feet echo on the white porcelain tiles of Pearson Specter Litt. It’s empty there too. But at least the lights are on, this time around. 

He makes a beeline to his office, listening to the faint music that comes from the end of the west corridor, and finds her there. Donna’s feet are up in his desk. She studies the New York outside as if she and the city just met.

Harvey opens the glass doors and knocks _shave and a haircut_ to get her attention.

“I thought you’ve gone home.” He says, when she looks at him.

Her answer is composed of a smile and a shrug. 

He can understand the gesture.

“Sorry to rush out this afternoon.”

And just then her look is full of superiority.

“How’s Dr. Agard?” She asks as statement.

He thinks about asking, but it’s Donna. His lips purse and his eyebrows betray his annoyance. Donna just laughs.

Harvey draws closer to her, leaning his hip against the table, in front of Donna. They watch the movement outside for a while —so fast, so restless — and Harvey turns around to meet the empty space where his mother’s painting used to be. The next track starts, _Clair de Lune_ , and Harvey remembers.

They were listening to it that night. She favored classics when his father wasn’t playing, and he’d been fiddling around with the camera. She hummed while she painted. No rush at all.

He smiles at the memory.

“How did you know?"

“I didn’t.” She tells him, with a shrug, before he can realize she had no way of knowing. “I guess sometimes things just happen.”

He looks at her, again. And when looking feels like no enough he rounds the table and leans against the chair, instead. Her head rests against his arm and she loosely laces her fingers through his. It’s a theme by now. He lets himself trace her fingers with his thumb.

“What'll we gonna do about it?” He asks.

“What’d you want to do?”

“I’m not sure, yet. Any ideas?”

“When in doubt, ad lib.” She half jokes, and he has to remember that she’s not good at this, either, and he laughs.

“That’s what you’ve been doing? All this time?”

“It’s always a good sign when no one notices.”

He shakes his head, a little impressed, a little in love. His eyes scan the empty office, the empty hallway, and he thinks about the empty building before his gaze stops at the faded contour of the painting in the wall, again.

His mother never knew what she was painting before she finished — he distinctively remembers her telling him this, _I don’t know, honey. Let's find out._ Then she’d smile and choose a random color.

“So we just… keep going?” She asks.

Harvey takes the tumbler of whiskey from her hands and smiles.

“As long as we don’t end up with a duck.”


End file.
